Oh, how the mighty Mary have fallen.
For those new here, there used to be a multi-storied statue where you’re standing. A sturdy, impervious monolith to Mary Earps and all the former England No 1’s triumphs: the lifting of the Euro 2022 trophy; her 2023 World Cup Golden Glove; her penalty save in England’s World Cup final defeat by Spain and the subsequent “F*** off” directed at the Spanish team that bellowed like a 100-tonne butterfly flap; her takedown of Nike because fans were unable to buy the England women’s goalkeeper top; the record 14 Women’s Super League (WSL) clean sheets for Manchester United and the fifth-place Ballon d’Or finish in 2023. Yet, it’s in danger of crumbling into a smouldering detritus.
Over the weekend, an extract of Earps’ new autobiography, All In, was published by The Guardian, that seemed to attack the merits of England manager Sarina Wiegman’s decision to make Hannah Hampton her No 1 ahead of the summer’s Euros, which England won courtesy of the Chelsea goalkeeper’s many heroics.
This is the sport many lust for nowadays. Woman versus woman; athlete versus athlete. Choose your avatar. Community Note: The right choice is the one with the Euro 2025 winners’ medal dangling around her neck, along with two saves against Spain in the final. Chelsea manager Sonia Bompastor knows it, accusing Earps of disrespect.
The temptation in the ongoing Earps-vs-Hampton saga is to reach for the big, obvious take — that Earps is bad and Hampton is good. The classless versus the classy.
Mary Earps celebrates winning Euro 2022 (Shaun Botterill/Getty Images)
On the surface, Earps, who also made allegations about Hampton’s behaviour in training, cuts herself as the bad actor here. Her situation is not helped by the extract only intimating at whatever sin Hampton committed during England’s Euro 2022 campaign.
In her book, she says Hampton was not selected in the September following the Lionesses’ Euro 2022 win because the Chelsea keeper’s behaviour during the tournament would risk sending training sessions off course. It is why she says in her book that she told Wiegman after Hampton was selected to start against Ireland last April that “bad behaviour is being rewarded”. The Football Association (FA) and the representatives of Wiegman and Hampton declined to comment when approached by The Athletic.
It is not only reneging on her autobiography’s titular promise of being “All In” but is seemingly unfair to Hampton, who was 21 at the time. But it is difficult to draw conclusions when the reader is given a sketch rather than the full picture. Only those involved know what happened and whether taking aim at Hampton is an overreaction.
Any tell-all autobiography by the Paris Saint-Germain keeper would require a section on the player who had served as her international foil for over a year, the player who seemingly forced her shock retirement from international duty five weeks before Euro 2025, bringing the sort of attention on the England set-up no one would have wanted so close to the start of a major tournament.
That the specific extract was published the night before Hampton had to play a competitive match for Chelsea, and months after England’s victory, was not ideal. Accusing the public who read the extract, and then remonstrated, of not reading it in enough context — when the book is not out in its entirety — is also tough to fathom.
“I know that people like to create drama, but please remember, this book is about my life and my experiences,” Earps posted on her Instagram stories. “Pulling out a paragraph, or a sentence here and there, is not a reflection of the contents of the book … I would never intentionally say things to hurt someone. That’s not my style. People can experience the same situation differently, this is not about heroes and villains, just different perspectives — multiple things can be true at once.”
Outside the 280-character limits of X, we have room for that kind of nuance. Room to consider that Earps, at 32 years old and having started in Wiegman’s first match as England manager in 2019, comprises the generation who lifted England to their current unprecedented heights, the ones gracing covers of Vogue and signing six-figure commercial deals. And she is part of the generation that will suffer the unprecedented drop back down, experiencing the blunt force of football’s turnover from such a celebrated height. This space isn’t easy to occupy.
That is not to absolve Earps, but to offer context in an increasingly context-free meme zone. Former England defender Steph Houghton too struggled to reckon with the drop, accusing Wiegman, like Earps, of not being fully honest about her future in the squad.
All of us are set to ride the unbridled journey of collective voyeurism into Earps’ life next week when her book is officially released. What happened when Earps left Manchester United for Paris Saint-Germain? Hurry, get to page 79!
If anything, these final stretches of the Earps’ saga speaks to how women’s footballers have increasingly become open-source content, a public saline drip — until they do something we don’t like. Show us your houses, your dog’s bed, your inner emotional sanctums. Flay yourselves alive for us — but not that much. No one wants to see the underbelly, the full range of negative emotions that don’t fit on the cover of a glossy magazine.
Earps is not the only player to straddle this blurred line. A few weeks ago, it was England and Arsenal winger Chloe Kelly, suddenly branded with vicious names after biting back at hecklers following the 3-2 defeat to Manchester City in the WSL. Hampton too found herself in the crossfire after Euro 2025’s Waterbottle-gate, shouts of “Think about the children!” colliding with serenades of her quick genius, columns desperate to label Hampton good or bad, hero or villain.
Mary Earps reacts after saving a penalty by Spain’s Jenni Hermoso during the 2023 Women’s World Cup final (William West/AFP via Getty Images)
But it’s not that simple. Neither is this. Earps’ heroism arose as much for her emotional vulnerability off the pitch, her heart worn so self-evidently on her sleeve, as her on-pitch performances. That same superpower is now her weakness.
Full pictures are not one-dimensional, in the same way players are not. Two truths can coexist, as Earps has said herself.
Earps’ actions can be viewed as petulant and navel-gazing, while acknowledging the mangled emotional human thicket from which they arise. It can be true that Hampton once caused trouble but became a better version of herself and deserves praise for that.
Heroes are human. Avatars also bleed. And perhaps we need to grasp how seamlessly we exalt one hero after the next, feigning shock when one doesn’t handle the fall.